Hello, I’m new to TrueNAS but I’m starting to get the hang of it, but I’m a little stuck on how to setup my NAS and the apps.
Currently I have a NAS with a 64Gb SSD as boot device.
Then I have a 1Tb SSD in my system, and my storage discs of 4x 4Tb in RAIDZ1.
I want to use the 1Tb for my apps, so I have created the Apps-pool on that. How I understand it, this will house the images of the apps and installations.
Since the 1Tb drive has no redundancy, I want ensure my data of the apps (config, data, etc) is safe in case of something happens.
What I planned on doing is to mount the config and data folders to a dataset on my RAID. So if something would happen to my SSD, I will not lose the data of my apps.
For example I run a couple of servers for my kids on there, and if those worlds get lost, it is time to move out 
Is this the best way of doing it? I would preffer to use the speed (and additional space) of the SSD entirely for the apps, but without setting up a backup-sollution that is not safe.
Should I set it up how I initially planned, or should I go for placing it all on my SSD and setup some sort of backup sollution for the config/data of the apps?
I would love to hear form you how you would set things up in my situation.
Thanks in advance!
Depends what kind of apps you’re running. If none of them will benefit much from the configs/data being on flash, then just put it on the RAIDZ for simplicity.
If they will benefit from faster storage, maybe something like Plex metadata, then you need to decide how much fault tolerance you need. A mirror would be best. If that’s not an option, then you could snapshot the config/data periodically on the RAIDZ.
The only thing that probably will have quite some read/write action will be the game servers.
I will have a Jellyfin server but only used casually by my family, so not really high load.
I might put the transcode information on the SSD as I don’t need any backups of those.
Also for the game servers I might be able to setup a cronjob and only store the backups on the RAIDZ once a day. But I think I have the setup figured out.
Thank you for the advice, really appreciate it.
1 Like
I don’t know how much RAM you have, but if you have any RAM to spare you can use tmpfs for the transcode directory. Assuming Jellyfin operates like Plex, the transcodes are ‘streamed’ so don’t need much space, and I’d guess 1gb of RAM is plenty. Would save some additional wear on the SSD.
My NAS has 32Gb of RAM. I’m sure I have a Gb to spare, thanks for the advice.
Learning more and more